“The palace revoked your clearance and you don’t even know why. On top of that, your partner dies—might have been killed—and Internal Security can’t even get themselves together long enough to give you the right data about it. And you can’t complain to your family because the palace says that you need clearance to do even that ..." [p. 143]
Prince Kiem, whose grandmother is the Emperor of the seven-planet Iskat Empire, is ordered by her to marry his dead cousin's partner, Count Jainan, who happens to be the diplomatic representative for the planet Thea. Kiem, who's something of a scandal magnet, didn't know his cousin Taam well, and he's never met the presumably-grieving Jainan. But, as the Emperor says, someone has to marry Jainan in order to preserve the treaty with the Auditors, who represent the Resolution -- a galactic bureaucracy which controls the 'links' which connect far-flung corners of the galaxy, and which is extremely interested in alien remnants discovered by those under its purview.
Jainan is not particularly keen on marrying anybody, either, but he knows his duty. It's immediately obvious from his narrative that his marriage to Prince Taam wasn't a happy one, and that Taam had gaslit, bullied and isolated Jainan. Slowly, though, he comes to realise that Kiem is not like his cousin: that he's a good man with a conscience, determined to do the right thing and unravel the tangle of obfuscation, deceit and restriction surrounding Taam's death. Cue a murder mystery, a slow-burn romance, a genre-typical lack of communication between the romantic leads, sabotage, interplanetary diplomacy and a trek across a snowy wilderness, where we learn that bears on Iskat are scaly and have six legs.
I really liked the characterisation here. Kiem is plain-spoken and kind, which is an underrated virtue: Jainan is scholarly, with a speciality which comes in handy when they're investigating Prince Taam's dubiously-legal mining operation, and emotionally brittle. Kiem's aide Bel is a spiky delight and deserves her own book. Kiem and Jainan are both slow to understand (a) who the real enemy is (b) that the other person in the relationship feels the same as they do. They each make decisions and take actions that seem, to put it kindly, illogical. But in the end they save each other, or perhaps save themselves. This was a sweet romance, with an interesting plot and tantalising (i.e. fragmentary) world-building: an excellent mood-lift in the dark days of November.
I bought this in October 2021 -- having, I'm fairly sure, read an earlier and shorter version posted as original fiction on AO3 -- and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list. And then I immediately bought and read Maxwell's second novel, Ocean's Echo. Review imminent!
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